The Collaborative Agent Design Research Center (CADRC) was established at the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo in 1986 as a sponsored program. Over the past two decades, this self-supporting non-profit research center has undergone several major transformations, successively reinventing itself to meet the goals of its long term educational vision and research mission, and the realities of funding applied research on a California State University (CSU) campus.